Recently, I’ve noticed this weird trend of behavior in which people act extremely cavalier, and even sometimes bothered, at the idea of a fire drill. And it’s not just a handful of people either. It seems to me like the majority of adults scoff at fire drills. This is such a peculiar behavior to me. Especially, since there are not many things more serious than an actual fire.
Like all offices, my workplace periodically does fire drills to prepare us for a situation in which there is an actual fire. And when I say periodically I really mean it. We do these twice, maybe three times, in a full year. Which only makes the groans and the eye rolls even more outrageous. These drills, which serve a serious purpose, take just minutes out of our ENTIRE year and yet they are treated like an incredible inconvenience. And I want to stress the word inconvenience here because that’s the part I truly can’t wrap my head around. People react to this legitimate process as if it’s a burden. Now removing the real necessity of these drills for a second, allow me to ask one question: A burden from what???? Your desk job that you don’t like? That unnecessary meeting you have every single week? How can you complain about your job all the time but the one time you are asked to be away from your desk for a moment you become annoyed. If nothing else, it’s a mandatory break. Take it.
So where did we learn this behavior? This has to trace back to grade school right? Fire drills were a time for class clowns to shine and for you to horse around with your friends. I personally liked to find which kids were covering their ears from the fire alarm so I could deem them weak and note that I would use them as a human shield in case of a real fire. Kidding. But that was some weak shit.
Anyway, I couldn’t help but think about all of this during my company’s latest fire drill. Actually ended up missing most of what the fire marshal said as I started to write this article in my head . Oh wait, shit.
